Leveling Down: The Story of Hentai RPGs

Before I take out my handkerchief and begin to cry over the fate of hentai RPGs in late Windows era, I'd like to handle a separate topic here, and that is remakes.

I love remakes. I'm weird that way. When a game gets remade, it means it is not forgotten. When games are not forgotten, we have respect for them. When we have respect to games, the industry flourishes. When the industry flourishes, the folk is content. Confucius would be proud of my writing style.

Let's see what has been remade in the realm of hentai RPGs. The first title to mention is Branmarker: Shami Risni no Bōken, a remake of the good old PC-98 RPG. Unfortunately, this remake is by far inferior. Nothing was done to make the gameplay even slightly more modern, and the lovely graphics of the original were replaced by glossy, crude, amateurish CG images.

If you play a lot of hentai games, you've probably heard of a company called Zyx. I actually don't like those guys so much. They like to insert too many sadistic scenes into their games. They haven't made many RPGs, but two of them - of course back from the PC-98 era - were lately remade for Windows and... gasp! - translated into English!

You might wonder why I don't seem to be so exited about that and even failed to mention this fact in Chapter 8. Well, that's because you can't really put those two games in the same league with Cobra or Xentar. I'm talking about the two Ikazuchi Senshi Raidi games, which became Lightning Warrior Raidy when they were remade. Those games are very basic dungeon crawlers, with undressing enemies and a lot of heavy scenes, mostly lesbian (which is good) and sadistic (which is not good).

The first one is really not worth checking out; it's a frustrating crawl through painfully similar environments, without even an auto-map (you have to find a map for every floor first) and with a RPG system so basic that it makes Tetris look like a RPG. Now, the second is significantly better. It has several dungeons, a town, and an immediate auto-map. There is something strangely appealing in this very simplistic, very old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Probably the insane amount of very hot women everywhere. Yeah, that must be it. Also, it has a certain macabre atmosphere, and can get quite challenging. Bottom line: want to be retro? Do it in an intimidatingly Sapphic way.

Another remake I would like to mention is Words Worth. It was made by none other but our friends from Elf. The original PC-98 release was, frankly, a rather boring solo dungeon crawl. But thanks to it unusual premise (the hero being the prince of a monster tribe), many characters, and a cool story, it got so popular that they made an anime after it. Luckily, it was remade for Windows, in real-time 3D, and - get ready! - action combat! That's right, no more lame one-on-one turn-based battles. You just hack and slash through the monsters while exploring the dungeon. Very basic. Very old-fashioned. But hey, it's a remake of an old game, right? Check it out for me, because I'm totally indifferent to this kind of games.